


The Plaid Shirt

by KendylGirl



Series: The Alchemy of Butterflies [5]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: Developing Relationship, Fashion & Couture, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 09:46:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17423552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KendylGirl/pseuds/KendylGirl
Summary: The infamous plaid shirt has reappeared onEllen, causing Armie to remember the first time he saw Tim wear it.





	The Plaid Shirt

**Author's Note:**

> I watched the video of Timmy’s speech in Austin and clicked through bunches of pictures, and this is how I conceive of the phenomenon of The Plaid Shirt, oddly reappearing despite its owner’s well-known love of fashion, within my own little universe.
> 
> Willowbrooke is wonderful for many reasons, not the least of which is that she took the time to edit this despite working on the next chapter of her own amazing RPF; she is a rock!

It’s softer than it looks.That I remember well.

He had been odd the whole night.It was March, but it was also Texas, so it was 87 degrees in the shade, even long after the sun slipped below the horizon, yet his skin was dangerously wan and cool to the touch.And there he was in this dark plaid monstrosity, oversized, untucked, with a white tee peeking out of the bottom. _When the fuck did he start ordering clothes from L.L. Bean?_ Had he even washed his hair?It was shoved fitfully in tangled bunches behind his ears like he hated every strand of it.When he arrived, I’d offered him a drink, tried to joke about the tent and the humidity and the desperate need to pick my nose right before stepping in front of the cameras.He barely looked at me.

Her laughter jabbed at us in the periphery, rising in sharp crystalline peaks, somewhere amid the perpetual camera flashes and the pointless chatter.She was in her element, without a doubt.In the meantime, he and I tottered awkwardly down the red carpet, separating and joining like the swirls of a Slinky caught in the relentless pull of gravity, together yet apart.

I couldn’t take it.I reached around his shoulders and pulled him into me, but he stuffed his hands into his pockets and gave a closed-lip smile that never rose past his indefatigable dimples.

When we reached the end of the gauntlet, we turned a quiet corner into a short hallway that would open to the main auditorium.I stayed next to him, feeling the desperation start to claw at me, to rip through my gut and let my blood trickle out onto the floor.This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.Something was very wrong with him, and I didn’t know what to do. _Where are you?I need you here with me!_ I had tried to catch his gaze, to beg as loudly as I could without letting the prying ears passing around us hear a thing.But he just stared over my shoulder and tugged on the hem of his shirt.

_Fine, we’ll do it your way_.“Is that thing new?”

“Kinda.”Even his voice had been distant, deadpan.Uninterested.

It was starting to sting.

“Where the hell’d you get that thing, anyway?It’s too big for you.”

A soft snort.“Yeah.Yeah, it is.”He kept his head down, fingering one of the small buttons.He smirked and started to walk away towards our table.

I wanted to cry.I probably should have and left it at that.

Instead, I had grabbed his arm and spun him around.“What the fuck is the matter with you, Tim?Is this evening too _boring_ for you?”

His eyebrows scraped the bridge of his nose.“What?”

“I spend fifteen months of my life following you around the globe, handing you statues, and I _wanted_ to because you earned every goddamn one of them…and I was—no, _am—_ proud of you.”I swallowed around the acid in my throat.“But you can’t be bothered to do this one thing for me?”

“No… _no_ , Armie…it’s not…I…”He had shaken his head slowly, as if the effort to explain himself to me were more than he could bring himself to do.And it just wasn’t worth it to him to try.

It had been my breaking point.

My fingers tightened on his arm like a vice, and I hissed down into his face,“So _this_ is how it’s going to end for us, Tim?Is it?After everything we…after _all_ of it?Timmy Chalamet, bored to shit because he’s not the center of attention for once? _Really?_ Did I ever fucking matter to you, Tim? _Ever?_ ”

He had blinked at me several times, like he just couldn’t grasp what I was even saying, as if none of it made any sense to him. 

I had leaned back and looked him up and down, then jerked his arm so his head would snap up and I could see his eyes finally.They were bloodshot and glassy and rolled away from my glare as soon as I’d seen. _Seriously?_ I sneered at him.“Jesus, are you fucking _high_ right now?”I threw his arm away from me.“Wow.That’s great.Thanks a lot.You’re a class act, Chalamet.” 

I turned and left him standing there by himself.I found our table and slid into the seat next to her,gripping the back of her chair so she wouldn’t be able to see my hand shaking, though I needn’t have worried.She was far too caught up in her calculated preening, swiveling her bodice around to pose for various people, thrusting her leg out in front of her and tilting her head back so that her ponytail could drape down her back just so and her skin could tug toward her hairline to smooth out the tiny wrinkles on her cheeks, then angling her eye artfully to the side with the proper degree of allure just before the cameras clicked.She wouldn’t have noticed if my nose had been sheared off my face.

He had sat down on the other side of me a few minutes later.I didn’t even acknowledge him.

When he took the stage, I wanted to walk out.I didn’t know how I was going to sit there and listen to him, listen to the soft turns of his voice, the one I had heard every night when I would close my eyes, whispering into my brain from places I’d tried so hard to pretend do not exist.My anger had already melted around the edges and burned itself out, and I was left with nothing to replace it, just emptiness.A hole for the cinders where my heart used to be.

I stared at the carpet and heard him crinkle his paper, flattening it out unsteadily on the podium.“I wrote something out but…it’s feeling awfully formal now…”He had rambled a bit, made some of his usual self-deprecating comments, belittled himself by rolling out the French pronunciation of his name and chuckled about how everyone must wonder, “What the hell’s _this_ guy doing here?”

This pulls my face to the stage, slackened and raw. 

His name.

I know that part of him hates it.He’s cut on it numerous times as weird and depressingly French, and it used to get him nothing but shit in middle school.He shies away from how “unrelatable” it makes him, how it is one more degree of separation from an insular America that, despite its own speckled history, shuns that which is atypical and foreign.

But I love it.I always have.I love its music, the transformative lilt of its syllables, which run together like arpeggios sighed into a breeze.His given name conjures the spell, and the surname brings it to life.The emphasis placed, as it should be, on the last three letters breaks all the others apart as they enter your ear and make you a slave to it, slipping you through the gates of heaven to fall at the feet of the god that lies within.

I know his name as a tribute, one I will forever use to honor him, in a way that celebrates his uniqueness, his beauty.It is how I had first spoken to the world that I love him for who he is really is.I will call him by his name, his _real_ name, for as long as I live.

“But I’ve got family in Texas, so…”

He had looked right at me then, and I could feel the tears fill my throat, so I’d slapped at my glass of water to help me wash them away.

“Sorry, I’m a little ignorant today.Armie made me promise to keep it short and sweet.The truth is they asked Stanley Tucci to do it first, and he couldn’t come, which is why you’re getting me,” and he laughed good-naturedly.Like that were one thing we all could agree upon is that he is no one’s first choice.I wanted to punch myself.“But this is really easy for me to do.The relationship I’ve had with Armie has been unlike the relationship I’ve had with other actors or people I’ve worked with…”

He had started to talk about that scene, my scene, where my character feels the end approaching like a plastic bag being wrapped around his face, the end of a relationship that had given him life, how I had to somehow encompass the whole of this romance on my face, to convey the joy of it and the pain of its loss.He had seen it first at Sundance, he said.He didn’t know what I’d done.And he had chewed on his lips, wiped at his chin with his hand, arms folded in front of him like a defense.“That’s like master-class acting, encompassing 7000 emotions in one moment.”

_No!_ I had wanted to scream. _No, it wasn’t that at all_.It was _one_ emotion.One emotion, one moment.One person.Just _one_.

“Working with someone who was totally open to the experience, to the relationship, to the story…and I always say this, but the man that this man _is_ …”He had his head bent to the glass podium, merely glancing up on occasion, pointing at me when the rush of feeling swallows his voice for a moment, and his eyebrows had raised in an effort to pull the words out.“…that’s somebody I want to become.I felt this way when I met him, I felt this way in the month and a half working with him…and I’m all the better for it.”

Holy. Shit.

_How did I not see it?_

Him, too.

He does.

The red eyes and the pained face and the silence, all night long.

He does, too.

_Hammer, you fucking asshole_.

He had tried to deflect what he’d laid bare, tried to compliment _her_ to a smattering of applause that had begun with her very own hands.He’d stumbled around, tripping over the highlight reel and arts endowments, and he had even started to read the stage directions from the page, running his finger along the lines of text so he could follow them as he had careened right off the tracks and over the cliff.

When I finally had to join him on stage, I could barely function.I had cracked a joke about how it must’ve been surreal for Timmy to be handing an award to someone else, “having won about 45 of these over the last season, so if it makes you more comfortable, you can hold this while I’m up here.”I had wanted it to be an apology, a way to reframe what I’d thrown in his face before the ceremony, but in my clumsy desperation, it had come out too flip, too harsh.He had taken the block of glass from me like it was ice, a zombie with hollow eyes and stiff movements, and had disappeared into the shadows once again, and I just wanted to follow him, to beg him to hold me up with the other hand.I had started blithering, thanking _Variety_ about three times, thanking her for coming (as if I could’ve kept her away), thanking her dad and my mom, as if either of them gave a shit.I’m surprised I didn’t thank Big Bird or my mailman. 

I had been caught in a tornado of well-wishers afterward, and I lost sight of him.By the time I had been able to make a break for the green room, I was told by security that he was gone. _Really_ gone.The cab that had picked him up at the venue had been instructed to take him to the airport.

The plaid shirt was folded neatly on the table.

I ripped out my phone and called him, over and over again.

“ _Fuck_ , Timmy, pick up, pick _up_!”

Straight to voicemail.

It changed everything. 

The wall I’d built around me to keep it all inside, the wall that had cracked and chipped steadily over the long months of work and promotion, of sitting next to him on dozens of stages and watching his talent and perfection dazzle and charm, of rooting for him and chasing him and holding his waist to tug him closer for thousands of pictures—that wall was reduced to dust and sand, washed away by the very flood it had been intended to keep at bay.

I couldn’t pretend anymore. 

I snatched up the shirt and grabbed a random worker, some scared kid who fingered the badge hanging around his neck.“Tell everyone…tell them I had to go.”The kid’s eyes bugged.“Thanks, man.”I had slapped him on the back and had run out the door.

I had hours to think about it, hours to decide how I was going to tell him, how I was going to plead with him.I sat hunched on the plane, face shoved in the folds of the shirt, drinking in the scent of him and ignoring the tears that threatened every time I took a breath.

When I got to his apartment, it was the middle of the night.I didn’t give a shit.I pounded on the door with gusto, fearful that if I called out to him, he’d turn me away and I’d spend the night folded against the green walls of the hallway, homeless in every sense of the word. 

No answer.

In a fit of inspiration, I tried the knob.It gave way easily and popped the door open to a column of blackness.I slipped inside and shut it behind me, covering my face with my hand to allow my eyes to adjust so that I would be able to see clearly in the new light.

I heard a soft sniff. 

I dropped my shield.

Timmy was in the corner in the ratty chair that one of his buddies had given him when the latter had moved into a college dorm.He still had on the white t-shirt, and his bare arms were laid out on his legs, soft side up, reflecting the yellow light that streamed in the window above him.His head was bent over his lap.“I got it for you.In Park City.Sundance.”

I had inhaled sharply, but the words I should’ve said never came.

“You’d been complaining about the cold and how just looking outside at the snow made you shiver.”His fingers of his right hand had started to slide up and down the unblemished skin of his left arm.“And then you got that ridiculous coat and hat.”He huffs softly.“So I found this at some hiking store, to add to your new wardrobe, I was going to tell you.”His nails have started to dig into the flesh, leaving red lines in their wake.“Make you into a cold-weather guy…pine trees not palm trees, some shit like that…”He swallowed audibly.“When I took it to your room, she was…well, I realized it was stupid.I just kept it instead.”

“Why did you leave me?”

He’d looked up at me.His face was wrecked, pain and exhaustion warring with something needy, something that had made me feel hopeful though I had no right to it.

“Why are you here?”

“You know, Tim.I _know_ you do.”

“I know nothing, Armie.”

“Don’t give me that shit!You’re not fucking _Elio_.”

“Maybe not.”He sniffed.“How about you?Are you Oliver?”

“If I were, I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

“That doesn’t tell me much.”

“Ok, how about this:I’m tired of lying.”

“To whom?Yourself?”

“No.Yes.To _everyone_.”

“Have you lied to me?”

“If I’ve ever made you feel like you’re nothing to me, then yes.If I’ve ever made you think I wanted you to leave, yes.”I took a step closer to him.“If I’ve ever made you think I don’t love how you laugh or dream about your eyes or pray you’ll touch me, yes.If I’ve ever made you feel like you’re not the first person I think about in the morning and the last person I think about before I go to sleep, that yours isn’t the face I see when I think about happiness and trust and safety, yes.”I was close enough to touch him then, but I didn’t.“If I’ve ever let you believe that you’re not perfect and wonderful, yes.”

I saw a splotch of water on his arm.And another.And another.

“If I’ve ever let you leave a room believing that I haven’t been in love with you for almost _two years_ , then yes, I’ve lied my goddamn ass off.”

He folded over, convulsing into his hands.I had dropped to my knees and lunged for him, my arms wrapping him up and pulling him forward onto my shoulder.“Stop it,” he mumbled.“Don’t do this to me, please.”

“It’s true, Tim!It’s the only thing about my whole life I _know_ is true!”

He had tried to push me away, but I held on tighter.“You aren’t _mine!_ You’re _married_.You have a _family_.You…you aren’t…”Another sob coughed out.

I had pulled back and grabbed his face, my palms on either of his cheeks.“Tim.Listen to me.I have a wife I don’t even know anymore, a woman who’s grown apart from me from the second we were married.Long before I ever arrived in Crema, I was sick to death of setting myself on fire just to keep her warm.And I have two _great_ kids that I love _way_ too much to raise in a home where their parents are bitter and miserable and emotionally bankrupt.They deserve better.We _all_ deserve better.”My thumbs brushed at his cheekbones to wipe away the tears and the doubts and the distance.“It’s _you_ , Tim.Since that first day in Italy, god _damn_ it—it’s always been _you_.Tell me you didn’t feel it, too.Tell me you don’t want this, and I will leave and not bother you again.”

I remember how he had shoved his face into my neck as the tears came in earnest.I drug all of him into me, his elbows and ribs and thighs, lifted him up and wrapped the shirt around his shoulders, crushing him to me.We held each other up, muffled rushes of air the only things moving around us for long, indulgent moments. 

Finally, I had felt him relent.He had sagged against me, and I remember running my fingers under the collar of the shirt and tucking it around him, bundling him in this oversized cocoon he’d meant to hold me, but suited him so much more.“You have to keep this now, you know,” I’d whispered.“It has to remind you of this moment whenever you need to feel like it’s _me_ holding you, warming you up even if my arms aren’t able to.”

I remember clutching him to me, hands moist, fisting the fabric along his spine with insistent hands, my cheek resting on the bony expanse of his shoulder.My tears had darkened the fabric, running the olive into black.“I’m so sorry about tonight, what I said,” I breathed into his hair.“I didn’t…”I couldn’t finish.I couldn’t tell him.

“Didn’t what?” he’d mumbled into my neck, lips moving against my skin, wet and soft.“Didn’t know how much I respect you…admire you…that I think you’re a great actor…a great person?”He’d swallowed, and his lips had shifted, and it had felt like a kiss, but I had been too afraid to look at him, too afraid to move my head and risk his lips pulling away from the spot they were burning through, searing down through the tendons of my neck.“You didn’t know that I _worship_ you?”Another shift. _Was that his tongue?_ “That you’re the best friend I’ve ever had?”

I had felt weak, like my knees were going to give out and I would crumple to the floor like a length of chopped rope.

“Tim…”I couldn’t help myself.My hand spread on his lower back and pressed him relentlessly against me. _God_.A shudder overtook me, and I could feel his fingers curl into my sides and his hips shift, a subtle undulation that shot fire into my groin the moment his reverent lips gave way to a slow graze of teeth against the fluttering skin of my neck.“You’re going to kill me, you know that?”

“ _This_ is what you should think of when you see this shirt.”His hips had kept moving.“You should see it and know that, wherever I am, I’m thinking about my hands on you,” and they slid under my shirt, “how you taste,” and his tongue flicked out, “how you smell,” and his nose drew up my neck behind my ear.“When you see this shirt, I want you to be speechless.”

And he had kissed me then—no, that’s not right.A _kiss_ is tame.It is predictable and prescribed.But this was different.It was metamorphic.His lips captured me, _dominated_ me, and his tongue wiped away any memory I had of having done this before.He redefined the sensation, made me a fawning teenager all over again, rewrote the concept of what a kiss is, what it does to me, how it feels when it turns me inside out and liquefies my internal organs with sheer want.

Everything started over again with this shirt.

 

* * *

 

I get his text in the early afternoon:

_Tell Hops I said she looks like a princess in that bathing suit._

_Tickle Ford’s chin.He loves that._

_When you’re alone, watch me…_

Once everyone is safely downstairs eating on the veranda with Grandpa, I dip into my room and pull out my laptop.I get onto _YouTube_ and do a quick search for his name and _Ellen_.As soon as the page loads, my skin flushes.In a blink, I am hard as a rock.

By the time the harness picture comes up on the big screen behind him, I am lightheaded.

I grab at my phone on the side table. _Nice shirt._

_Thank you.It’s my favorite.Not sure why._

_You know you’re killing me, right?_

_That’s the idea._

_I’m completely fucked, aren’t I?_

_Well, not yet, but as soon as you’re back on the mainland, your ass is mine._

_Literally and figuratively._

_Now you’re catching on._

_We all miss you.Ford looked for you for a solid hour after you left._

_I miss you guys, too.Wish I could’ve stayed._

_I’ll see you in a couple days._

_Hey, Tim?_

_Yeah?_

_Sleep in the shirt tonight._

_Too late._

_Been doing that all week, dude._

_Hey, Tim?_

_I love you, too._

**Author's Note:**

> In “Window Seat,” the second installment in the series, Tim makes reference to confessions made in the ratty chair in his apartment; here, we see it unfold.
> 
> Armie's tribute to Tim's name was inspired by his introduction of Tim at this year's Hollywood Film Awards. I noticed that he pronounced it with flair, with the accent displaced to the last syllable of it, and I was intrigued...
> 
> I had to pay tribute to Armie's line about not setting yourself on fire to keep another warm, especially given the way it nearly knocked Tim out of his chair. No one can tell me that little gem was not based on personal experience...
> 
> Tim’s speech for the Austin Film Society’s 2018 Texas Film Awards [AFS2018](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVsfrCE1qlw)
> 
> Armie at Sundance in his ridiculous coat and hat.
> 
> When you share your thoughts, an angel gets its wings…Ok, so I can’t verify that, but I _do_ know that your comments make one nervous writer very, very happy, so tell me what you think! :)


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